It has been proposed that a vehicle such as an automobile be equipped with a safety apparatus to ensure the safety of a moving living body (e.g., a pedestrian) present ahead in the advancing direction of the vehicle. Such a safety apparatus is provided, with a controller that executes a safety operation to ensure the safety of a pedestrian when the pedestrian in an area that is ahead in the advancing direction of a vehicle traveling on a road and is adjacent to the road moves in a direction that crosses the road. Examples of such a safety operation are warning the vehicle driver or performing an automatic braking operation, in which the brake of the vehicle is automatically turned on.
A determination whether to execute the safety operation may be made in the following manner. First, the degree of danger is obtained according to the moving speed and position of a pedestrian, and then the safety operation is executed if the degree of danger is equal to or higher than a threshold value, as described in Patent Document 1. The execution time of such a safety operation varies according to the magnitude of the threshold value. That is, the larger the threshold value is set, the later the execution time of the safety operation (i.e., the safety operation is executed when the pedestrian is closer to a vehicle). In contrast, the smaller the threshold value is set, the earlier the execution time of the safety operation (i.e., the safety operation is executed when the pedestrian is farther from the vehicle).